by Reiss, CD
“Pokey can see Mommy later,” Jonathan said impatiently, lifting her out of the seat even though she could get up herself.
Her knee came out from under my hand, and one of my charms caught the fabric of her white tights, pulling a thread.
“Wait,” I cried, but it was too late. The thread snapped.
Jonathan placed Gabby on the ground. “What?”
Gabby screamed before he got the whole word out.
“Her tights ripped on my bracelet.”
“There’s a line here!”
Jonathan backed away to see what the yelling was about. Gabby was bent over the huge run in her stocking, pulling it apart as if that would fix it.
“It’s okay!” I lied.
Martha’s legs in black jeans and hot pink flats that matched her shoulder-length hair came into my line of sight.
“They broke!” Big, fat tears formed under Gabby’s eyes, sticking to the lower lashes.
Jonathan and Martha tried to pick her up at the same time. I got out of the car to find my husband had Gabby in his arms, chubby knee pushing the limits of the hole in her tights.
“I’m sure I have crazy glue,” Martha said, rooting around her bag. When I was in my early twenties, I was never as well-prepared as Martha Cruz.
“It’s way too late for that,” I said.
Gabby leaned into me with her arms out, bridging the distance between us. Either I’d gotten weaker or she was heavier than I remembered.
“Maybe it wasn’t the last pair,” Jonathan said. “Martha, can you go back to the house and—”
“There are no more,” I snapped.
“How do you know?” he snapped back.
I wanted to claw his eyes out because he had a point. I only knew what she’d had when I left, and I stood there, both cowed and enraged.
“She’s right,” Martha said. “Maybe I can handwash the first pair?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said, snapping his fingers.
“White tights that got dirty hours ago?” I wiped Gabby’s tears. “That’s not going to work.”
“There are no other acceptable choices,” my husband stated unequivocally, knowing that I knew the choices hinged on their acceptability, and their acceptability hung on whether or not they allowed him to give me six orgasms or six strokes before we were due at the theater.
“Martha, can you take her to have lunch with her friends?” I faced my daughter and wiped her tears with the cuff of my jacket. “Daddy and I are going to get you a new pair of tights.”
“Pomiss?”
“I promise.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and held me as tightly as she could. Over her shoulder, Jonathan pressed his mouth into a tight line. It was the only thing holding back a series of commands I wouldn’t obey.
Gabby toddled off with Martha, leaving my husband and me alone—if you didn’t count the way we stared at each other as its own sentient life.
“Jonathan,” I started when the pressure was too much.
“Goddess,” he replied, halving the distance between us, bringing heat to my skin and weakness to my knees with a single word.
When he put his hand on my neck to draw me closer, I was sure he would demand an immediate fuck in the car. I didn’t have the strength to say no. In four seconds flat, I’d be in the back seat, bent over with my pants pulled down, offering my body like an object to use or worship at his discretion.
But he didn’t demand anything. He asked a question.
“Where do we go for tights in that size?”
* * *
Sunday wasn’t a good day to try to buy something. The little stores were closed, and the big ones were packed with people who recognized us. Most tried to ignore the musician and her handsome billionaire husband, though some discreetly took photos with their phones. One kid wanted me to autograph a sweatshirt she was going to buy, which I did, because she was a sweet kid from the performing arts school and it took me two minutes to make her happy.
“This way,” Jonathan said when I handed back the sweatshirt.
He pulled me around a rack and down an aisle until we got to a wall of little girl tights.
“Great,” I said, looking at the back of a package. “I think her size is—”
Jonathan pulled two pairs of every size off the wall and dropped them in my basket. When I tried to go to the cashier though, he took my hand and yanked me in the other direction, through women’s, where he grabbed a handful of hangers off a rack and led me to the dressing rooms.
“How many?” the woman in front chirped.
“Five,” Jonathan said, snapping the tag away from her.
He barely slowed down past the open dressing room doors. He pushed me into the last one, closed the door, dropped the hangers on the floor, and—before I could think or breathe—pushed me against the wall in a hurricane of a kiss, pulling my knees up to wrap around him so he could grind the hard shape of his erection against the quickly-dampening fabric of my pants.
He jerked away and thrust into me as if his cock was a weapon that just needed to be unsheathed.
“I’m fucking you right here.” With my legs still around his waist, he jerked my pants down to my thighs. “You’re going to take it.” Reaching under my knees, he undid his fly. “All of it. And you’re going to be quiet about it.”
He planted his lips on mine before I could answer, while he guided his dick between my legs.
“I dare you to tell me no,” he said.
“It hadn’t even occurred.”
With a cruel thrust, he buried himself in me, forcing the air out of my lungs and releasing the pent-up electricity at my core. Pinning me against the wall with his cock, he took my face in his hand, driving hard and slow so I felt every twitch against my swollen clit.
“You want to know why I couldn’t wait another fucking few hours?”
I did want to know, but he sped up, squeezing my face so hard I couldn’t wrap my mouth around words.
I lost myself in his dominance.
My will left me.
I was one thing.
His.
I had one job.
His pleasure.
“Because I have to pin you when I see you.” His breath came in the rhythm of his thrusts. “I turn around and you’re gone. Then you come back forgetting who owns you.”
I shook my head vigorously, and he loosened his grip. “Never. I never forget.”
He didn’t kiss me. He fucked my mouth with his tongue. Maybe it was meant to say he believed me, or maybe he was saying it didn’t matter. He owned me whether I remembered or not.
Ending the kiss, he kept his open mouth near mine, and I kept my mouth open and available to him, surrendering with a surge of pleasure.
“You want to come for me?”
I nodded, mouth still open. He put his thumb in the corner.
“Suck.”
My lips tightened around his thumb, while in the hall outside, the chirpy lady brought someone into a stall.
“Keep sucking,” he said into my ear. I knew his rhythms and breaths. He was close. “If you stop, I stop. I won’t let you give me the orgasm. You got it?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Good.” With a push, he brought me closer but wouldn’t let me tip over the edge. “Easy does it. Suck hard.” His hips ground deep, then back and forth, bringing me so close I almost opened my mouth to cry out. “Good girl. Steady now. I’m going to count to three, then you’re going to give me what’s mine.”
Lost in the force of his desires, I waited for him to count, giving all my attention to sucking him as he drilled into me.
“One.”
He went deep, pressing his base on my clit.
“T—”
Ding-ding-dingaling.
Our group text with Martha. My orgasm folded in on itself until it was the size of a wish.
“Fuck,” Jonathan mumbled, still inside me as he took his phone out of his back pocket. He pulled out of me and held th
e screen up so I could see.
—She’s freaking out.
Is Pokey in the car?—
“Is she?” I asked, still thinking I could capture the orgasm before it floated too far away.
“I don’t think so.” Jonathan tucked his erection away and zipped his pants, letting my legs drop.
Bye-bye, beautiful orgasm.
I yanked up my pants and tied the drawstring into a bow.
“You don’t think so?” I sounded more annoyed than I wanted. Which was about as annoyed as I was. “How could you forget Pokey?”
The last sentence was barely out of my mouth before I regretted it.
“Goddess.”
His tone as he tapped out a response was a little too parental, and my immediate, undirected irritation crowded out regret, seeping into every word of a very simple sentence.
“Let’s just get Pokey.” I opened the dressing room door before I could regret sounding as if I was blaming him for everything.
Chapter 5
MONICA
We bought the tights and went back to the car, which Lil had—predictably—parked in a red zone. I got in first, and Jonathan leaned in to check under the seats. I’d held out hope that Pokey was in the back, but when Jonathan stood up without the stuffed pig, that hope rotted into disappointment and took its place next to my ripened sex drive. The plastic wrap over my spoiling emotions was stretched thin.
“Quick stop home,” Jonathan said to Lil before getting in and snapping the door closed.
He slid into the seat across from me. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t know why and didn’t ask myself for the answer. I just crossed my arms and legs, looked out the window, and sulked. But Jonathan was in the corner of my eye, looking right at me, pulling my filter thinner and thinner without saying a word.
“What are you looking at?” I said to the window.
Instead of replying, he reached into the little fridge Lil kept stocked and took out a bottle of water. He cracked the top and handed it to me. When I didn’t take it, he touched the cold, wet plastic to my arm.
“You’re dehydrated.”
My mouth was suddenly made of plaster and damp linen. I took the water and drank it.
“You’ve had a long flight,” Jonathan continued, sitting back. “And you’re hungry. I should have seen it and taken care of it already.”
I took the empty bottle from my lips. “I’m fine.”
“Really?” With a flick of his foot, he uncrossed my legs. The way they so willingly flopped apart annoyed me, but if I snapped them closed or crossed them, he’d take that as a challenge.
“I’m not in the mood right now.”
“I know.” He leaned forward, shifting to the edge of his seat so he could put his hand on my thigh. “I know.” His voice was low and serious. He pulled the silver tab of the drawstring around my waist, unlooping the bow. “I know everything you’re feeling right now, and I also know I can’t control it.”
He pulled the drawstring free from the waistband.
“Hey!” I cried. “Do you know how hard it is to get those back in?”
My husband smirked as he wrapped the black string around his palm. “Tell me.”
He didn’t want to know. He was trying to distract me. He’d let me go on and on about how you had to put a safety pin on the end and push it through a quarter inch at a time. Then he’d use it as a way to edge me or punish me and I wasn’t in the mood. Really.
“There’s no time,” I said, looking back out the window. “We have an hour before her class is going to be in the theater.”
“Poor goddess,” he said, taking my wrist and wrapping the drawstring around it. “With such a sartorial nightmare for a husband.”
“The worst isn’t about my clothes.”
“No?” He tied the ends in a little knot. “What’s the worst thing about me?”
“You are demanding, overbearing, self-involved, and you don’t know what size tights your daughter wears.”
If I was being honest—which I wasn’t really—I didn’t know off the top of my head either. But my anger was a monster that needed to be fed. Acting like a child didn’t feel good, but I knew he wouldn’t hold it against me or take it personally.
“Because,” he said, “I don’t understand why any other sizes would exist when Gabby is the only little girl in the world.”
I finally looked at him. His eyes held the entire history of us—the love, the forgiveness, the anger, and the fear were all clear and present.
“Did that count for half?” I asked, running my thumb along the ridges of the drawstring around my wrist.
“Did what count?”
“I had to pick a number. Does getting half-fucked in the dressing room count?”
Jonathan could do numbers in his head in at least seven languages, so as he listened, then stared at me, I knew he was calculating something, but it wasn’t six-minus-one-half.
“We’re home,” he said without looking away. His internal system told him where we belonged.
Chapter 6
JONATHAN
My wife didn’t get easily overwhelmed, but when she did, it was obvious. Her energy twisted and distorted over small things. The rhythm of her speech and movement became syncopated, losing their presence and grace. Fucking her back to normal was the standard strategy, and that afternoon, possessing her was a plan I’d already set in motion.
But in my enthusiasm to own her body and will, and with the distractions of toddler ballet, I’d let the basics slide.
Food. Water. Sleep.
Now I had the most beautiful mess in the car. A directionless storm of needs blew her from one thing to the next as she grasped for something to hold onto.
That would have to be me.
“We’re home,” I said when the speed of the car and the incline of the hill told me we were on our block. The car stopped and the gate rattled open.
“We’ll get Pokey and come right back.” She turned to me with the bottom of her face set in a frown. “No fucking around. No counting games. No bossing.”
We stopped at the head of the drive.
“I’m hungry,” I said, lying. I could have gone another few hours without eating, but she’d taken the bottle of water. She wouldn’t admit dehydration was a third of the story and exhaustion and low blood sugar were the rest, but she’d starve to make sure I ate.
“We don’t have time,” she said as our driver opened the door. “Thanks, Lil. Can you keep it running? We’ll be right back.”
“Sure will.”
When my wife got out of the car, I realized how surprised I was at her resistance. We had time. Not much, but her miscalculation wasn’t what was unexpected. She never missed an opportunity to dote on my every calorie.
“Pull across the garage,” I told Lil. “And don’t leave without me.”
I met Monica at the front door as she opened it.
“Where is she?” Monica asked—meaning Pokey.
“Her room, in front of the mirror.”
Without a word, she went to Gabby’s room, and I strode into the kitchen, praying Mira had left something portable for lunch.
“Damn.”
Soup. Prayers denied.
The top drawer in the fridge was stuffed with sandwich shit. I pulled out the entire thing and closed the door. I found bread, mustard, and was plucking a silicone spatula from the drawer when she walked in with Pokey.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I said I was hungry.”
“You…” Her eyes scanned the sandwich stuff as if she wanted to swipe them off the counter with her gaze alone.
“Do you want turkey or ham?”
“What the hell are you doing? I took a red-eye on no sleep to get here in time for our daughter and you’re going to make us late because you’re peckish? Are you a grown man?”
There had been a time when I would have used her words as an excuse to enforce my dominance over her. But I was a grown man who’d
stared down death with her more than once. I corrected her based on her needs, not mine, and right now, she needed help taking care of the basics.
“Turkey then.” I scooped brown mustard from the jar with the edge of the silicone spatula. “Any objection to Dijon?”
“I’m going. You can get yourself to the theater.” She started away.
“Goddess,” I said with a voice she rarely refused, “wait for me.”
She didn’t, and I smiled to myself, because her will—even when misdirected—was the most beautiful thing about her.
Chapter 7
MONICA
Turkey and Dijon. Really?
Apparently my husband’s body was possessed with the spirit of a toddler. I couldn’t figure out the idea that his need for a sandwich was more pressing than his daughter’s need to see us supporting her.
When my father wasn’t deployed, he never missed a recital, yet the ones he did miss because he was in Iraq or Afghanistan or Korea were the ones I remembered—which was why I’d busted my ass to get back to Los Angeles in time for my daughter. She wasn’t going to look back on her life and wonder where I’d been, no matter how hungry her father was.
Lil had left the car running, but moved it back.
“Hey,” I said, standing by her window, “Jonathan’s going to follow in his own car.”
“He said to wait for him.”
“That changed.”
“Let me text him.”
He was going to tell her not to leave without him. Fine. I could go myself and he could get chauffeured around.
“I’ll go myself then.” I tapped my phone for the app that opened the garage door so I could get to my little Jaguar, a.k.a. bestfuckingthingever. “If you pull up, I can get out.”
“Yeah,” she said, pocketing her phone. “Mr. Drazen said to park here, so…” She shrugged as if she didn’t have a choice but to block the way out.
There was no use getting mad at Lil or asking her to do the opposite of what Jonathan had asked. She was loyal and kind, and she didn’t deserve to be put in the middle of her employer’s marital spats.
